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Sunday, November 17, 2013

Then Gov. Malloy's assault weapons law will be a complete waste of time. I am used to a certain amount of not obeying speed limits and traffic laws everywhere, but Connecticut seems rather remarkable on this. Worse, we had a Hartford Police Department patrol vehicle tailgate us -- like one car length at 35 MPH on an onramp, and he did not back off at any point. We were obeying the speed limit (which alone would be suspicious behavior in Connecticut), and he kept tailgating for at least half a mile. At first we wondered if he was trying to intimidate my wife into breaking the speed limit so that he could write her a ticket, but apparently not. Perhaps he was responding to an emergency call, but even this does not justify tailgating. If he needed to get past us, then turn on the lights to let us know to pull over, okay?

One of the employees at Enterprise car rental here told us that the state police commonly drive 80 to 90, even when not responding to a call, and few people drive less than 80 on the interstates (which was also our experience). We had multiple situations where we were driving 10 to 15 MPH over the limit and we we being passed by more (often far more) cars than we passed. Some were driving in a manner that was really quite reckless -- lots of abrupt lane changes, cutting in and out of traffic in order to drive 80 or 90.

Let me emphasize that I am not wildly enthusiastic about obeying laws, no matter how silly. But in a state where most drivers (including police) ignore the laws, why should we assume that one more law is going to make much of a difference in criminal behavior?